The Trump administration on Jan. 22 said it’s in the process of canceling nearly $30 billion in green energy loans and revising another $53 billion in loans that were provided under the previous presidential administration.
“Over the past year, the Energy Department individually reviewed our entire loan portfolio to ensure the responsible investment of taxpayer dollars,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement.
His office “found more dollars were rushed out the door of the Loan Programs Office in the final months of the Biden Administration than had been disbursed in over fifteen years,” according to the statement.
“President [Donald] Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy,” Wright said. “Thanks to the Working Families Tax Cut, the newly restructured Energy Dominance Financing is playing a key role in fulfilling that mission.”
The 2025 tax law referenced by the secretary provided the office with billions in new lending authorities, and the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing is the world’s largest energy lender with nearly $290 billion in available lending, according to the department.
Details were not provided about which projects or programs would be impacted by the loan cancellations, but the administration has often retracted funding for green energy projects that were implemented under President Joe Biden’s term.
So far, the Trump administration has eliminated about $9.5 billion in loans to wind and solar projects and, where possible, has replaced those by supporting new capacity at natural gas and nuclear power plants, the department said. Last year, it also canceled $4.9 billion for the Grain Belt Express transmission project to send power from wind and solar energy projects to cities in the Midwest and East.
Those polices, the White House said last year, have “impeded the development of these resources, limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens.”
Separately, Wright said in November that the biggest use of the remaining loans will go to boost nuclear power. The department said priorities will include coal, oil, and gas, and projects on critical minerals, geothermal, the power grid, and manufacturing and transportation.
Before taking office, Trump had campaigned, in part, on the promise that he would eliminate some regulations so as to allow for the drilling and production of oil in the United States. He said that more oil production would lead to lower costs overall for Americans.
The president last month signed a law that revoked some limits on oil drilling in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, a move that was supported by lawmakers in the state.
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